Harvard Community Garden Vandalized Again

The Harvard Community Garden was the target of vandalism early Monday morning, the latest incident in a series of vandalisms that have plagued the garden since it opened this April.

At around 1:30 a.m. Monday morning, an unidentified drunken man entered the garden and ripped several zucchini plants out of the ground before being spotted by a Lowell House tutor and the Lowell night guard, according to Emily E. Osborne ’12, an intern working on the garden this summer.

Harvard University Police Department officers arrived at the scene minutes later and sent the man off with a warning, Osborne said.

According to Joshua D. Goldman, the Lowell House tutor who witnessed the incident, the man was homeless and told officers he vandalized the garden because he “had something against green.” Goldman said that the HUPD officers told him they had encountered the man in the past and did not think seeking payment for the damages would be fruitful.

Monday's incident is the third time the garden has been defaced since it opened this past semester. Shortly after its opening, several of the garden's beds were stomped on and the garden's entrance banner was stolen.

Osborne said that currently the garden's principal means of protection is its proximity to the Lowell security guard's office.

“It's hard to actually physically prevent people from getting into the garden...but just the fact of it being in plain sight seems to have deterred a lot of people,” she said.

Osborne said that garden administrators have begun to consider other possibilities for protecting the garden but have yet to make any concrete plans.

“We're looking into motion sensing lighting," she said, "but that's still up in the air."

—Staff writer Derrick Asiedu can be reached at dasiedu@fas.harvard.edu.